Tim Franco

Tim Franco is a French-Polish photographer based in Shanghai. He is fascinated by the transformation of Chinese cities and has been docummenting these changes since 2005. He also keeps tuned in to the underground art world and the social implications of urbanization in China. His first self-published book, Shanghai Soundbites, released in June 2008, depicts the evolution of the alternative music scene in China, particularly Shanghai. In 2012, Franco traveled for a year to document Chinese architecture and urbanism. His book, Metamorpolis, was published in 2015, foucsing on the fast rate of urbanization in the megacity Chongqing.

Franco’s work has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Financial Times, and Le Monde, among other publications.

Earlier this month, photographer Tim Franco visited Asia Society to show his work from Chongqing, a city of more than 25 million where he has been reporting since 2009. Many of the images Franco showed appear in his latest book, Metamorpolis (...

It’s a feature of the landscape one sees throughout China. On the sides of roads, at the edges of construction sites, on the steep banks of rivers, and in pastures that wrap around the fat pylons of future highways, Chinese people are farming,...